It is known to provide a mine operation such as a mine site with a train loading facility arranged to facilitate loading of material onto dedicated material transport trains by train loadout operators.
Typically, the cars of such trains have an associated overload mass limit that for safety reasons should not be exceeded, and train loadout operators are typically responsible for ensuring that the mass of each train car is below the overload limit.
However, the task of ensuring that each car mass is below the overload mass limit is not simple because the material tends to be loaded into the cars at high speed, and the density of the material loaded into the cars is variable. In addition, each car is typically weighed when the car has moved away from the material flow, for example 4 car lengths away. As a consequence, the mass of material in a car can vary significantly and a car overload situation may not be detected until several more cars have been filled.
When a car mass overload is detected, it is necessary to stop the train loading process in order that the excess material in the car can be removed, but this causes undue delays.
In order to reduce the likelihood of stoppages during the train loading process, operators tend to load the train cars conservatively, and while the likelihood of train stoppages is much reduced as a result, a consequence is that at least some of the train cars are loaded significantly under the mass overload limit, and this equates to a significant loss of production.